The firmware for RTL8723AE WiFi cards is missing. When the system initializes the card, the following error is shown in dmesg.

[ 25.805187] rtl8723ae: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723fw_B.bin
[ 25.843829] rtl8723ae 0000:04:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8723fw_B.bin failed with error -2

I found that the firmware file rtl8723fw_B.bin is not in /usr/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/.

I was not able to find a way to fix this using apt.

Apparently, this was addressed in legacy VyOS, as I found the following page that contained the missing file.

https://github.com/vyos-legacy/linux-firmware/tree/lithium/rtlwifi

I downloaded the files rtl8723fw.bin and rtl8723fw_B.bin from that page, added the files to /usr/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/, rebooted, and now the card is loading, the WiFi interface is up, and the following message is in dmesg.

[ 26.237737] rtl8723ae: Using firmware rtlwifi/rtl8723fw_B.bin
[ 26.242850] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'rtl_rc'
[ 26.243155] rtlwifi: rtlwifi: wireless switch is on

Below is a bit of backstory that may be useful.

I have been running VyOS on an IntensePC Pro as an out-of-band console server for a while. It was running vyos-1.5-rolling-202503040017-generic-amd64 and had no issues with WiFi, but it has a card that uses the rtl8192cfw.bin firmware.

It had a failed Ethernet port, so I purchased a new IntensePC Pro. The new IntensePC Pro came with an RTL8723AE card. The initial setup on the new IntensePC Pro was with VyOS Stream 2015-11, but I also tried vyos-1.5-rolling-202503040017-generic-amd64, which the old IntensePC Pro was running.

The VyOS versions I have tested with the new IntensePC Pro with a RTL8723AE WiFi card are below, and both failed to initialize the card.

vyos-1.5-rolling-202503040017-generic-amd64
VyOS Stream 2015-11